'Thank you,' as he put it in his buttonhole. 'Perhaps some day you will see this again. Then remember.'
[CHAPTER XLVI.]
SOUR GRAPES.
'Hast thou forgot the day
When my father found thee first in places far away?
Many flocks were on the hills, but thou wast owned by none.'
Wordsworth's 'Pet Lamb.'
The London surgeon met Tom May and Page, and gave every hope of little Gerald's ultimate recovery, though for the present there was not much to be done except watching him, and encouraging such exertion as did not excite or fatigue. Cherry was so anxious about the examination, its result and the directions she received, that she never perceived that the doctor spent a much longer time in the study with her brothers than was needed on the little boy's account.
This, her preoccupation and bliss of ignorance, was a relief to both Felix and Clement. They believed there would be ample preparation, and not only were willing to defer paining her, but would have missed her cheerfulness, and wished to spare her the protracted suspense that might undermine her health and power of meeting a crisis that might be deferred for weeks, months, nay years, or possibly might never come at all; for there was a chance that treatment might disperse the evil. The suffering did not increase, and was not constant, but only brought on by sudden movements or in certain attitudes, and any token of it was always laid to the credit of the strain. No one could fail to perceive that Felix was more inert, more grave, and, if possible, more gentle, but the acknowledged injury, as well as the loss of his two brothers, might account both for this and his disinclination to the ordinary summer gaieties. No one indeed, wished for them, now that Angela professed to have broken with the world, and Geraldine's whole mind was absorbed in the anxious tendance of the little nephew, who preferred her to all others, and was continually needing to be soothed or amused, with a precocious intellect stimulated by all he had undergone, and at the same time with spirits and nerves too much shattered to bear the least strain on mind or body. Edgar's child she must have loved, but this little tender, fitful, dependent creature, used to be the half-comprehending recipient of his sad memories and confidences, was inexpressibly dear to her.
There was hardly any visiting that summer, except the calls of a few friends, and in September Felix decided on asking the two Lambs to the Priory. He had business affairs to arrange with his partner, and thought it would be unforgiving to mortify the wife by excluding her from the invitation, so he braved Cherry's absolute indignation. Poor Cherry! had she known all, she would not have exploded as she had hardly done since her girlish contentions with Alda. 'It is really weak to give that woman her wish, and at such a time.'